Last week, FirstNet continued meetings with AT&T. The teams are making good progress on State Plan development and are on track to deliver draft State Plans this summer. FirstNet Regional Leads and Consultation staff met with their regional AT&T counterparts to coordinate outreach strategies and activities.

Also last week, FirstNet staff and former Louisiana SPOC Col. Mike Edmonson presented to the Executive Committee at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) State and Provincial Meeting in Litchfield Park, Arizona.

FirstNet staff provided a programmatic update at the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) 2017 Western Regional Conference in Ontario, California.

FirstNet staffed a booth at the Critical Care Transport Medicine Conference in San Antonio, Texas and talked with a number of EMS providers about how FirstNet will bring better data connectivity to their operations.

This week, FirstNet will be participating in Connecticut Statewide Interoperable Executive Committee and Connecticut Public Safety Broadband Committee meetings in Middletown; an Oklahoma Public Safety Broadband Network Governance Board meeting in Oklahoma City; the Arkansas EMS Expo in Little Rock; the Georgia Emergency Management Summit and Training Sessions in Savannah; the International Trauma Life Support Ohio Conference in Columbus; the Smart Texas Revolution Conference in Dallas; and the 2017 Communications Academy in Seattle, Washington.

The summer 2017 in-person PSAC meeting will be Thursday, June 15th, 2017, in San Antonio, Texas, after the conclusion of the PSCR annual conference. PSAC members are asked to reference instructions to book invitational travel as outlined via email, and send any questions to PSAC@firstnet.gov.

The summer 2017 in-person Tribal Working Group meeting will be Monday, July 24th, in Flagstaff, Arizona, one day in advance of the field session of the Tribal-Interior Budget Council (TIBC). Instructions for making invitational travel arrangements are forthcoming.

Media Watch

*The information provided is copied as-is from the media outlet source and is not edited by FirstNet. Links to non-Federal Government websites do not constitute endorsement of any product, service, organization, company, information provider, or content. Clicking on non-Department of Commerce hyperlinks will direct you to websites that are not under the Government’s control.

Urgent Communications 4/11: Journey to FirstNet a story of remarkable persistence, refusal to succumb to doubters

Is “miracle” too strong a word to associate with the NPSBN initiative? Maybe, but the same could be said about a hockey game. However, when the full context of the challenges faced by proponents of a dedicated public-safety broadband network during the past decade is considered, the use of the word “miracle” it is not a significant stretch.

That’s where FirstNet steps in. It’s a nationwide mobile broadband network by AT&T dedicated to public safety. “It’s really very important that access to the bandwidth when they need it,” Nebraska FirstNet Program Manager Bob Wilhelm said. The system will eliminate competition for access between first responders and the community. It will also allow any agency to connect to each other seamlessly.

Dallas Business Journal 4/10: AT&T picked to build nationwide wireless network just for first responders

AT&T Inc. has been awarded a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build a wireless network exclusively for first responders, in an effort to separate their communications from crisis-time congestion. The 25-year agreement includes a pledge from FirstNet, the name for the government-backed project, to provide 20MHz of spectrum and “success-based payments” of $6.5 billion over the first five years to support the buildout of the network.

Web and Social Media

FirstNet’s social media presence grew at its normal rate this week. Twitter gained 56 new followers, now at 5,927. Facebook has 1,036 followers. LinkedIn now has 2,173 followers. YouTube has 420 subscribers.